In the 1500s, when Cervantes was writing Don Quixote, his home country of Spain was extremely Catholic. However, amongst wealthy groups there was a very popular literary genre called chivalry, but the trope had many anti-Christian ideals. When writing an analytical essay we try to find deeper meaning in the author's work but despite popular belief, the author is not always a mastermind who has layers and layers of hidden meaning in their text. It is often more fruitful to find how subconscious bias and thoughts affect the author's writing. Don Quixote seems like an innocent spoof, but upon further inspection, we see it gives us a window into the mind of a pious Christian who is worried about the corruption of his faith. 

Don Quixote's madness is a reflection of the misbegotten obsession the 16th century gentry had with chivalry and non-Christian ideals. Don Quixote is a wealthy landowner in the small village of La Mancha, but he becomes obsessed with books of chivalry in which the knights-errant parade around the countryside, slaying giants and saving princess maidens. After reading hundreds of these books, Don Quixote believes he himself is a noble knight-errant, and so he rides out to go on adventures. Thies “adventures” consist of attacking windmills because he thinks they are giants (VIII), and swooning over maidens at a castle who are really prostitutes at an inn (II). At first sight, this may seem like an innocent parody of the classic chivalric tale, but it becomes apparent that Cervantes is actually criticizing the gentry through the knight’s antics. Don Quixote says, “We cannot all be friars, and God brings his children to Heaven by many paths. Chivalry is a religion; there are sainted knights in glory” (21:18:07). Comparing chivalry to a religion was extremely heretical at this time. Cervantes is criticizing how strongly chivalry figures into pop culture. He illustrates this danger by showing how close it comes to infringing on Christianity. All of this is happening through Don Quixote's insanity, immediately positioning the reader against the knight's views. 

Don Quixote, however, is not the only example of corruption through chivalry. There are a number of tragic love stories whose main purpose is to illustrate the non-Christian and evil tenet of popularized courtly love. Cervantes is not only focused on chivalry, but on all manner of distortions of Christianity through text. The main body of the writing in Don Quixote is about young lords and ladies wandering the land and bemoaning their romantic tragedies. This type of love is frowned upon by Cervantes because it is a very non-Christian romantic love that takes center stage in chivalric tales. Chief among these is the story that follows Cardenio—the son of a wealthy man—who is in love with Lucinda. Cardenio introduces Lucinda to his friend Don Ferdinand, the son of a duke. Don Ferdinand previously pursued a peasant named Dorothea who he seduced but refused to marry. Don Ferdinand falls in love with Lucinda and forces her to marry him. Cardenio, in shame, flees. After chapters of antics they all meet at an inn, and Cardenio reunites with Lucinda and Dorothea begs to be accepted by Don Ferdinand (XXXVI). This illustrates a common golden age archetype called the “Don Juan.” This consists of a powerful member of the court who becomes a villain by perverting courtly love; Don Juans manipulate, kill, and do whatever has to be done to get with whomever they love in that moment. Don Ferdinand is a “Don Juan,” and in this case, he is being used to illustrate that the lecherous should be punished: he is punished for dishonesty, womanizing, and perverting God's covenant of marriage by having to marry a peasant (XXXVI). Conversely, Dorothea is rewarded for being ever loyal to him with an increase in her station, and Lucinda and Cardenio are rewarded for being ever virtuous to each other by getting married.

The story of the shepherdess further reinforces this value system, illustrating this obsession with chivalric love and how being a good Christian is shunned in favor of form-obsessed eros romance. Romance was not to be praised in this time. It implied the sin of lust. Romance was often based around the longing for another body, and in Christianity, one should only procreate to continue the species, nothing more. In chivalry, there is an honor which demands the knight value maidenhood. This invites readers to think that chivalric tales perpetuate the Christian value of chastity. However, beyond that, there is still a great love and longing the knight has that borders on lust. It perpetuates eros romance, so Cervantes condemns it. One great example of this is where Don Quixote and his squire come across a funeral procession and they follow to find out what happened. Then they read a poem written by the deceased man which talks of how he died of lovesickness when a beautiful shepherdess maiden refused to be with him. Then, that very shepherdess reveals herself at the funeral to explain. She says that she wishes to follow the virtuous path all her life, but because she is so beautiful, she has been pursued by everybody. She ran away to be a shepherdess and escape them, but they still follow her (XIV). The maiden is a low class girl from a poor house, and it is explicitly stated that all her suitors are students from the university, meaning they were wealthy gentry who could read. This follows a theme that continues through the whole book: Christian peasants can be more virtuous than the upper class. No one represents this ideal more than Don Quixote's faithful, squire Sancho.

Sancho is a down to earth farmer who left his family to go with Don Quixote. He is very witty and often the butt of the joke alongside Don Quixote. Sancho and Don Quixote build up a friendship over months of adventure that, due in large part to Sancho’s faithfulness, manages to overcome Don Quixote’s madness. Don Quixote is being tricked by a group of people, and Dorothea, who is sympathetic to Don Quixote, notices Sancho’s refusal to partake: “Dorothea, who was quick witted and very spirited, knew that Don Quixote’s reason was impaired and that everyone mocked and deceived him except Sancho Pansa” (10:28:39). Sancho represents how even the lower classes can be morally better than the upper classes if they are true Christians who are ever loyal. The strongest representation of this dynamic is through Don Quixote and Sancho’s relationship. The reader often sees through the eyes of Sancho, so they felt sympathetic towards him. Sancho often tries to get Don Quixote out of bad situations but because of the knight’s madness he punishes Sancho for getting in his way. In this instance, Sancho is trying to convince his master that windmills are just windmills: 

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza. 

“Those over there,” replied Don Quixote, “With the long arms…”

“Look, your grace,” Sancho responded, “those things that appeared over there are not giants but windmills…”

“It seems clear to me,” replied Don Quixote, “Thou art not well versed in the matter of adventures.” (2:09:08) 

 

Sancho tries to convince Don Quixote of truth for his own safety, and all he gets for his troubles is a passive aggressive remark. Through Sancho’s loyalty, we see the virtues of an Old Christian for which he will eventually be rewarded: at the end of the novel he is made the mayor of a small town. The reader often feels helpless because Don Quixote holds all the power, so there is nothing for Sancho to do but to play along with his master’s insanity. 

Though the printing press had only recently been invented, it is most likely that the upper class would have been the only audience, forcing them into the perspective of a dynamic where chivalry is being valued above Christianity. This sheds new light on all of the things Cervantes is criticizing: it is one thing to criticize the powerful and another thing to criticize the powerful to the powerful, and that is exactly what Cervantes does. Cervantes criticizes the gentry for getting lost in chivalry and forgetting Christianity, but to what end? There is another reason he is so worried: peasants increasingly have access to books. In chapter XXXII of Book 1, we learn about an innkeeper who is perilously close to contracting Don Quixote's madness because he has come across a set of chivalric tales which he and all of his low class work men read, enjoy, and believe. It could be inferred that Cervantes is worried that the old Christian peasant he so loves so much, represented in Sancho and the shepherdess, will be perverted just like the gentry if the chivalric tale is allowed to spread from the upper class via the printing press. That is why he portrays chivalry in such a silly light and shows Don Quixote as the perpetual butt of the joke. He doesn't want his gentry readers to take chivalry seriously so they feel it is no longer worth their time or that it should even be censored. 

There are numerous instances of the priest burning chivalric texts as a recommendation that the government should not let chivalry spread. In Don Quixote's town, one of his old friends, the priest, is very knowledgeable about chivalric texts. The priest decides to save his friend from his own books: “The priest asked his niece for the keys to the room with the books responsible for what had been done to [Don Quixote]” (1:40:25). The priest decides to go through the chivalric books and throw them in the fire. This turn of phrase is very telling of Cervantes’ mindset: “He might find a few that did not deserve to be punished in the flames”(1:41:07). This is very telling about how Cervantes feels about the books of chivalry; there is an implication of guilt with the word “deserve.” This chapter first seems like a simple criticism of authors, because the scene consists of the priest going through books one by one and reviewing their merits. Few pass his inspection, and most are thrown out the window to be burned. But as Cervantes concludes the narrative of Don Quixote being corrupted by chivalry and the perversion of courtly romance, it becomes clear that maybe Cervantes is not merely making fun of his peers, but instead suggesting that for the preservation of Christian values they should be censored.

    When we first start reading Don Quixote, it is easy to think that it is merely a riff on the overused trope of chivalry. But closer inspection reveals that Cervantes is criticizing the upper class for popularizing it because it has many anti-Christian ideals. Furthermore, Cervantes warns the reader that the new technology of the printing press may soon put these books in the hands of the noble, old Christian peasants and corrupt them. Cervantes twists the classic trope of the well-read person being revered—the illiterate peasant receives praise while the well-read Don Quixote goes insane. Maybe Cervantes is recommending that the nobility stop reading chivalric tales. Maybe Cervantes is recommending censorship. Or maybe he is recommending a stronger course of action: keeping the peasants illiterate.